Lay Me Down
by Grav
Summary: This went beyond failure, and now there was no home left to go to.


AN: Er…my muse came back from holiday and all I got was depressing apocafic.

This story is based on a fic isabellesmuse wrote last year after "The Siege II" called a_The Remnant _(it's in her lj). Sections of this (in particular the first paragraph) are lifted directly, with permission. I recommend reading it first.

I have been working on this with Isa since...February, and decided I should probably get my act together before the season premiere. She is responsible for Kate and Elizabeth.

The show contradicts itself regarding whether Heightmeyer is a psychologist or a psychiatrist: in "The Gift" she says she's the former, but in "Duet" she says she went to medical school, indicating that she is the latter. We decided to go with psychiatrist, but we are aware of the canon ambiguity.

Spoilers: Allies and back.

Summary: This went beyond failure. And now there was no home left to go to.

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**Lay Me Down**

Radek still dreams about Prague. They're rarely fond, nostalgic dreams anymore, though. Now he dreams of Wraith streaming across the Charles Bridge; and the Prague Castle, just before its self-destruct blows, invariably assumes the tall, spindly appearance of Atlantean towers. When the Wraith begin to feed on his family, Radek wakes up, sitting up and breathing heavily.

His quarters on Atlantis are more decorated now than they were last year when the world ended, or very nearly, for the first time. He has figurines of his favourite earth landmarks and pictures of family and friends in front of the house he grew up in. He wonders if any of it remains. He has seen what a Wraith invasion can do to a planet; he doesn't need to imagine what they have done to Earth.

There had been frantic activity when he first realized how very badly they had been had. The SGC had evacuated and purged their computers to stall the Wraith in the Milky Way Galaxy for as long as possible. The Alpha Site and Beta Site were fortified, but the bulk of SGC personnel had been sent to Atlantis. Radek was never entirely clear on how Sam Carter had managed it, and he never got to ask her. The Joint Chiefs realized that if there was any defense to be mounted, it would have to come from the Pegasus Galaxy.

And then there had been silence. Horrible, desperate silence as they waited to hear if the world had ended. Time after time, the Gate engaged without an IDC, and time after time, Radek sat in the Control Room next to Dr. Lee and prayed that the shield would hold. The long range sensors were quiet, and Caldwell paced back and forth between the briefing room and Elizabeth's office as his ship sat on a pier for repairs.

Finally, there was one last dial from Earth. A bloody and old-looking Daniel Jackson appeared, alone, and then the wormhole shut for the last time. The time since has been a horrible dream. The remnant of the Atlantis scientists trying to survive with help from the few SGC officers who made it to the relative safety of the Pegasus Galaxy, and trying not to give into despair.

A hand brushes across Radek's back and he allows it to pull him back down to his pillows. Every time she touches him, every caress, he is glad to be alive. Glad and horribly guilty. Which she would tell him was normal survivor's guilt, except she refuses to treat him like a patient.

Radek was never ready to be Rodney McKay. Radek is the nice one, the "good" one. No one expected amazing things from him because Rodney always had something better. And now Rodney is gone. Eaten alive on some Wraith hive ship, somewhere out there. Radek hopes it wasn't close to Earth, and at the same time, would do anything to see his planet one more time, if there would be peace afterwards. And now they look at him, waiting for him to perform a miracle.

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Major Lorne had a sister once, before the world ended. She had a son born with Down's syndrome and she loved him, but late at night, after her husband left her, she would call her brother in tears and curse her genetic make-up. Lorne always told her the same thing: it wasn't something she could change. She could raise a boy who would love everything and find joy in places where no one else ever thought to look. If he could talk to her now, he would tell her was sorry for being a sanctimonious bastard, and then they could curse their genes together.

The _Orion_ is a truly lovely ship. She has not fired a shot since they found her, and without Colonel Sheppard to talk to her, she isn't likely too. Lorne never had Sheppard's ability to commune with Ancient technology. He could operate it, but never to the level that the Colonel could, never as intuitively. He can fly her home, but he cannot make her soar.

Caldwell expects him to take over for Sheppard. Weir expects it too, but in a more understanding fashion. To her, he is Major Lorne. To Caldwell, he is the second up and coming Major in the Air Force that the Pegasus Galaxy has thrown into the middle of the fray, and he expects great things.

The _Orion_ didn't make the trip to Earth. They never found out if she had a cloak, and in the resulting mayhem of the evacuations and rebuilding, no one has had time to look. Caldwell didn't want to risk the men or the ship on what would be a worthless chase to Earth, and the Joint Chiefs had backed him up.

It had been Caldwell who found Lorne on the balcony over looking the two crippled ships, Terran and Ancient. It had been Caldwell who produced the bottle of Athosian moonshine. And Lorne doesn't have very many memories of the evacuation after that.

The next morning, when he stood blearily in front of Weir, she told him that they were rationing all medication and coffee. He stuck his head in the ocean instead. He saw his sister and his nephew and gave some thought to never coming up, but then he remembered the list he was supposed to be discussing with Weir: the list of people with the gene.

Lorne can't hear the city. He can't feel her in his blood. But he can work with her. And the others need that right now.

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Kate still believes in psychiatry, but she no longer harbors illusions that it will make a difference. Still, she forces herself to believe, a clinging, desperate grasp at something that used to be known, comfortable, stable. She's not sure anyone else really thinks it will make a difference, either, but they still flood to her office, out of habit or desperation. They talk, sometimes cry. She listens and it's increasingly difficult to maintain the delicate balance between commiseration and objectivity. Mostly she feels useless. All of their drugs are strictly rationed, so she can't prescribe except in rare, extreme cases. On the counseling side, she's stopped offering advice.

The scientists come to see her, as do the young, enlisted men and women. A handful of the junior officers. The people with more power, responsibility, and guilt she sees less often. Major Lorne came once, paced and wouldn't look her in the eye, and left without saying a word.

Teyla refuses to make an appointment with the excuse that others need Kate's time more than she does. This time it isn't her home destroyed, her people decimated. But she comes to Kate anyway, at meals, perhaps, or in the evening. They pretend they're just talking; Kate's long since abandoned the professional boundary between patient and friend. Teyla lost her entire team, and she's losing her faith in humanity, in the idea that self-preservation is a moral stance. Kate is powerless to encourage her; she's starting to feel the same way.

Carson avoids her, but he's still the head of her department, so some contact is inevitable. He looks terrible, and she thinks he can't be eating or sleeping much. Cadman used to drag him bodily to meals, but she knows from Laura's sessions that they've had a falling out. Carson blames the military for turning his retrovirus into a biological weapon and ordering him to continue the research. Kate is almost certain the order came from Elizabeth instead of Caldwell. Carson probably blames Elizabeth, too, Kate thinks. She suspects that mostly he blames himself for getting in too deep, for facilitating a chain of events that have led to an unthinkable conclusion.

She never sees Elizabeth. Elizabeth lives in her office these days, always central, always in charge, hiding from the people she leads. Kate sometimes considers pulling some kind of medical rank because she's sure Elizabeth needs to talk to someone, but she never does. She's not sure she really wants to know what's in Elizabeth's head. Radek sees her frequently enough and reports back to Kate. "I worry about her," he always says, and Kate doesn't ask for more.

Kate hasn't slept a night through for months, but her dreams are rarely her own. All day she listens to stories of terrors, real and imagined. At night she holds Radek through his own nightmares. After a particularly fierce one, she lies propped on one elbow, watching his breathing even out and the furrow between his brow disappear; she smiles, grateful he's found a moment of peace. Her patients live in her head, their fears flitting across her consciousness like Wraith darts. She knows she isn't fit to be a counselor: she can diagnose herself with several conditions without even bothering to confirm in her DSM-IV. If she were on Earth, a psychiatry review board would probably suspend her license. But the members of the psychiatry review board have probably been eaten by the Wraith, and she is the only psychiatrist on Atlantis. So she continues to see her patients, continues to listen. She still believes in psychiatry, even if she can't pretend it actually helps.

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The day she, Radek, and Caldwell locked Earth out of the dialing computer, Elizabeth shattered both of the mirrors in her quarters. She cleaned up the mess herself because she didn't want anyone to know, and when she cut her hand on a piece of glass, she didn't go to the infirmary. She and Carson were at the point when they couldn't have a conversation without arguing. It's become easier now that he no longer speaks to her at all. The cut healed badly, but the jagged, ugly scar across her palm is not nearly enough penance.

She pretends that the end of the world is not her fault. Most of the remaining population of Earth is under her command, and she tells herself that they need her leadership. If she busies herself enough with questions of food and medical supplies, she finds moments—sometimes a full minute at a time—in which she forgets the horror her leadership has led to. She gets through the rest of it by telling herself she had no other choice.

Of all the people to have escaped from Earth, she wishes it hadn't been Daniel Jackson. He hovers and frets and tries to decide whether the Wraith will defeat the Ori or vice-versa. She doesn't understand the comfort he seems to gain from such speculation; humans are the casualties in either case. His presence increases Elizabeth's desire to get the_Daedalus_ operational, in hopes that she can order him back to the Milky Way.

Once upon a time, some other Elizabeth ordered around a Vice-President and bargained with a Goa'uld and was smugly proud of herself. She had almost stopped remembering the disparity between that person and the one who has graduated to accidental genocide until Daniel Jackson showed up. He looks at her sometimes, and she feels alone and exposed. She is unmoored without John and Rodney, without their untroubled confidence that whatever they were doing was the right thing.

Elizabeth doesn't remember losing herself. It must have happened so gradually, a little decision here, a refusal to stand up to John or Rodney there. Maybe the end would have been the same: they were so terribly outmatched that the Wraith finding Earth seems inevitable. But Elizabeth wonders if she might not have made different choices, choices that would allow her to keep the few friends she has left, that would allow her to look herself in a mirror.

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Atlantis has been home for some time now. The bustle is quieter and the panic is a little closer to the surface and there is desperation and despair around every corner. But the people are still there, and they still try to continue on.

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**fin**

_Now I lay me down to sleep,  
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  
If I should die before I wake,  
I pray the Lord my soul to take._


End file.
